The Long Morrow

Description: Season 5, Episode 15

Air Date: January 10, 1964

Plot Summary: An astronaut embarks on a journey across time and space while longing for the girlfriend he had to leave behind.

Review: Hmm...this episode probably would have made more sense during season 4 with the hour long time to flesh out the ideas. There's too much going on, the romance is rushed, and the ending is unrealistic due to the time constraint. I understand and can appreciate the story they were trying to tell, but the epic journey is merely alluded to rather than shown.

Through the magic of science fiction, 1960s astronauts can now do 70x the speed of light! Goddamn! The goal is to reach a similar solar system to Earth. The lone astronaut making this journey, Stansfield, will be put into suspended animation for the vast majority of the trip which is estimated to take 40 years in total (including the return). The episode is mostly told through flashbacks while Stansfield sleeps in the stasis. In the months leading up to the launch, Stansfield comes across a scientist, named Sandra, and the two instantly fall in love. Okay, the way Stansfield asks Sandy out is kinda creepy, but, in fairness, that weirdo practically says she's in love with Stansfield after three whole hours of knowing each other. These lunatics were made for one another.

Obviously the difficult part of the journey is that Stansfield will still be young when he returns, and Sandy will be an old woman at that point. Wanting to preserve their love, both of these fools do the opposite of what they said without letting the other know. Seriously, these two deserve each other! Stansfield decides to not enter the suspended animation so that he ages the whole time, and Sandy chooses to enter suspended animation on Earth. Didn't anyone ever tell you guys the key to a good relationship is communication?! Sure enough, Stansfield returns as an old man, and Sandy awakens as a young woman. Instead of resolving anything, Stansfield just tells her to leave, and she obliges without much struggle. Making matters worse, they say that Stansfield's entire mission was pointless! My goodness...this guy can't catch a fucking break.

The only consolation to this entire story is that one guy says he's proud to know Stansfield. Gee, thanks, random dude. In all seriousness though, this is not how the story would play out. Sandy and Stansfield needed closure to this relationship. Likewise, the irony is not emphasized, the epic journey of Stansfield for 40 years is downplayed, and the profound love of the characters is lost. Come on, this is supposed to be some next level, across time and space love--you can't simply brush over that. I wouldn't go as far as to say this episode is bad, because it's not, they just didn't prioritize plot elements. In fact, there was probably enough material here to make a decent sci-fi/romance movie. Oh well.

You Drive

Description: Season 5, Episode 14

Air Date: January 3, 1964

Plot Summary: After a man hits a kid with his car, and flees from the scene, he is haunted by the boy's spirit.

Review: I really want to rank this among the underrated episodes, but it's tough when the episode doesn't want to take itself or the material seriously enough. This could have been the perfect story to replicate that fearful emotion in an episode like "The Hitch-Hiker." Instead, the music is odd, to say the least, and the main character, Ollie, acts like a buffoon rather than someone mulling over his guilt and worrying that he's being haunted. Having another potato pancake of a wife certainly wasn't doing the story any favors either!

As soon as the episode opens, Ollie runs over this kid, the paperboy, as Ollie is coming home from work. They say this kid was 12, but he looked college-aged to me! What the hell is with that? Ollie checks the kid's body and says, "I'm outta here!" as he books it. Almost immediately after going home, Ollie experiences the ghostly presence of the boy despite the kid not being dead yet. The reaction from the wife about this--and I hate to say it--paranormal activity is moronic. She keeps saying that people are breaking into their garage, and, at one point, this bitch leaves the car sitting in the middle of the road. My goodness...these fucking potato pancakes, I tell ya! These kind of shenanigans are why this episode drops the ball when it has, what should be, an otherwise creepy premise.

Later on, when the guilt is getting to Ollie, a business rival stops by and the two argue. Unfortunately for this coworker, an angular turnip for a witness claims the coworker is the one who hit the kid. I should note that the boy has died from his injuries at this point too. After all manner of creepy shit happens, Ollie smashes the car up and decides he will walk to work. The car then turns into Christine and nearly kills Ollie. However, Christine takes pity on Ollie and takes him to the police in order for him to confess and exonerate the coworker. The episode then ends quite abruptly with Mr. Serling closing us out with Ollie going into the police station.

I do really like this episode, because it has a cool story that is ripe with the potential to be scary. Sadly, they don't capitalize on the setup for whatever reason. The episode even went to great lengths to show the car driving around without a driver. I felt like they could have added that disturbing voice from "The Fever" and combined that with a more psychological approach similarly to "The Hitch-Hiker." The music especially was killing the atmosphere as it felt too erratic and cartoonish. With a little more polish, this could have turned into one of the classics, but, instead, is a forgotten episode.

Ring-a-Ding Girl

Description: Season 5, Episode 13

Air Date: December 27, 1963

Plot Summary: A diva-like movie star is drawn to her hometown after receiving a strange ring from her fans.

Review: This story would have been significantly better if, for one, it actually made sense and weren't so similar to the superior episode, "The Hitch-Hiker." You have the titular character, whose real (or stage) name is Bunny Blake, as she is heading toward the set of her next film. Her manager or agent or whatever the hell gives her a present from her fans: a new ring to add to her collection. Apparently she takes this whole ring-a-ding thing literally which just makes me think of Samara and Sadako. When Bunny looks into the ring she sees a vision of her family beckoning her to return to her hometown.

We cut to sometime later as Bunny comes to visit her sister and nephew. It would seem our dear little Bunny is taking a detour before shooting her next movie and wants to live it up for a day in town. The ring was bought by the townspeople each chipping in a dollar, but they never explain how it has any supernatural powers. Nevertheless, Bunny sees more visions and experiences a blackout. Bunny suspects that she was drawn to the town for a specific purpose as she ignores any advice to take it easy and rest. Bunny is convinced something will happen during a local holiday so she manages to sway the townspeople into going to her own little fan greeting; she does this by crashing the TV station.

Toward the end, when everyone is getting ready for Bunny's celebration, a freak accident occurs with a plane crashing in the location the town holiday was intended to be at. Bunny disappears as we realize that plane was the one she had been on all of this time...somehow. For whatever reason, no one is freaking out that Bunny was running around town and shit yet she supposedly died on a plane. Magically, the ring gave Bunny the power to coexist in two places at once...I don't know really. Regardless, Bunny saved the townspeople as her final act. Can't say I'll miss her though--Bunny was annoying as fuck! Overall, I would rank this as an average episode. It has its good points, but it feels like a retread of "The Hitch-Hiker's" twist minus the weight of that story or the suspense. Besides that, it doesn't make a lot of sense since Bunny is seeing the future, clearly alive and not a true ghost since she passes out, and yet we're shown visions of her aboard the plane too so it's not like Scotty beamed her up just to crash.